Sailing | Dream boats

If you can dream it, they can build it. Such is the creed of the luxury yacht shipyards that cater to the super rich.

What was once a standard template for luxury yachts has grown to include an array of massive, beautiful – and at times overbearing – designs.

But the attitude of the master craftsmen who build elite vessels is that they are there to realise the dreams of the owners, either in the look of the ship or the sumptuous interior.

Whereas a spa and exquisite furniture may once have been the premium touches, designers now ponder how to fit in a chandelier and make sure it works.

Owning a luxury super-yacht is very much an aspiration of the ultra-wealthy. Shipbuilders used to talk about the €1 million ($1.2 million) a metre rule, where every extra metre of length would raise the cost by that amount. Now people only half-jokingly refer to it as the €1 million a foot rule, indicating a tripling in cost for premium craft.

Up in the stratosphere are owners such as Russian magnate Roman Abramovich, who controls Chelsea Football Club. Abramovich is said to have spent $US1 billion on his yacht Eclipse but others haven’t been far behind when it comes to forking out for floating palaces.

Many of the most opulent boats come out of shipyards such as Lurssen in Germany and the Netherlands’ Amels. After announcing 12 new projects and two refits earlier this year, the latter says it is busier than it has ever been.

One of the highest quality shipyards in the southern hemisphere is New Zealand’s Alloy Yachts. Based in Waitakere in Auckland, it won this year’s award for the Sailing Superyacht of the Year, in a ceremony held in Istanbul.

That was for its 67-metre sailing vessel Vertigo. The managing director at Alloy, Tony Hambrook, says it builds both sailing and motor cruisers for clients.

“Our output is about equally split between the two,” he says. “It used to be more sailing boats but now it’s about equal.”

Such is the attention it pays to detail that its 250 tradespeople and apprentices produce just two boats a year.

“That’s about all that can be completed, given the requirements of the boats,” Hambrook says. “The average construction takes about 400,000 man-hours but we’ve had some boats take much longer than that. One of our recent yachts took about 800,000.”

He says that although no one has yet asked them to fit a swimming pool on one of their yachts, it may only be matter of time.

The key to modern design is that the naval architects and shipbuilders respond to the personal wishes of the owner. If the owner wants something fitted, there is a very good chance that’s what the shipyard will deliver.

Hambrook says lighting has been one of the main challenges. Owners may have fallen in love with certain electric systems on shore that are very tricky to install on a ship.

The search for the desired ambience, however, goes beyond lights. Hambrook says while the old interiors mainstay used to be mahogany, now it’s lighter timbers.

“Maple or sycamore are what they tend to use, rather than the darker woods,” he says. “Owners want a lighter and airier feel for their boat interiors.’’

While the wishes of the owner are high priority, safety is an even more critical requirement.

The major international certification bodies such as the American Bureau of Shipping and the Lloyd’s Register Group in London take a very active approach to yacht design.

“They’re very strict about what you can do,” Hambrook says.

Director of sales and marketing at Hodgdon Yachts, Ed Roberts, says building a luxury ship is one of the ways wealthy individuals express themselves. Hodgdon is one of the leading shipyards in the United States and specialises in customised vessels.

“You obviously can’t get Picasso to paint your picture,” he says. “But people can get the yacht they want, if they can afford it.’’

As some buyers want the same level of opulence in all their surroundings, whether they are at home or travelling, there are designers who cater to their clients in a number of fields.

“The designers are asked to work on their yacht, their home and their jet because the owner wants the same look and feel,” Roberts says.

As for yacht design itself, he says one the most influential was Australian Jon Bannenberg. Starting in the early 1960s, he worked with shipyards around the world and counted among his clients Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes. He died in 2002 but his son Dickie now works in partnership with Simon Rowell at Bannenberg & Rowell Design.

One of the best known of the current crop of designers is Norwegian Espen Øino, who is based in Monaco but works closely with shipbuilding company Danish Yachts, in Skagen, Denmark, to produce a range of super-yachts.

A major innovation has been the use of lightweight materials in sailing boats and motor cruisers. Composite fibres are used widely in competitive yacht racing, but there has been wide use of other advanced technology on super-yachts.

Glass is another one of the more common materials. Finely crafted and very strong, it has found a wide range of uses in modern boats.

Roberts says that many owners are now trying to make their yachts more environmentally sustainable.

“They’ll fit LED lights, which have less of an environmental impact,” he says. “Also they want to make the propulsion systems more efficient.

“For all that, however, it’s very hard to make a motor-cruiser sustainable. But there’s been a shift back to sailing and maybe that has to do with having less impact on the environment.”

China has come to the rescue of luxury boat-makers still suffering from a slump in sales brought on by the global financial crisis. While many bankers and private business owners still give the boating market a wide berth because of tough economic conditions, demand is coming in from the mining sector – where wealth is heavily dependent on China’s hunger for resources, as well as from Chinese buyers themselves.

Princess Yachts, which is owned by the luxury powerhouse LVMH, has found that mining-related sales are on the rise. Sydney dealer Mark Chapman says that while the Sydney market has been extremely quiet, orders from mining areas have been bright spots, and a few sales have also been made to Australian-based Chinese-born residents, “particularly in Western Australia, and there are green sprouts popping up in Queensland as well”.

In Australia in the past year, Princess has sold about six motor yachts in the 60-foot (20-metre) range and priced at $2 million to $3 million, mostly to buyers in mining-related industries.

Boat-builder Riviera has also noted a recent rise in buyer interest. The Gold Coast-based company, which nearly collapsed under a mountain of debt three years ago and had been in receivership since then, was sold to a Queensland property developer in March. It sold six boats at a show in May – half to international buyers.

The Riviera boats were priced above $1 million. Stephen Milne, brand and communications chief, says that while that result was well below the 20 boats that would have been sold during the market peak, it was an advance on the recent trough. “We’re well off the bottom and on our way back up the curve,” he says.

Riviera has seen “real signs of life” in demand from the United States, Milne says, and interest from mining sectors.

While the China-driven mining boom is helping things along in Australia, the real money to be made is in China itself. The east Asian nation has more than 875,000 millionaires and the Hurun Report suggests almost half of them want a boat. Better still, China has 400 billionaires but only about 100 yachts that are more than 60 feet long, according to the report.

Global players such as US-based Brunswick, owner of the Boston Whaler and Sea Ray brands, has forecast sales growth of 25 per cent in China this year, matching growth in the previous year, as boating gains popularity. The boat builder sold about 55 craft in China last year, giving it about 35 per cent of the market for boats shorter than 40 feet. Princess Yachts started selling in China in 2009 and is reported to have sold five boats there, including a 95-footer to a property developer.

Global players, however, face tough competition from new domestic rivals, which do not have to pay the 43 per cent import tax. At least six Chinese boat builders compete for the growing domestic market, and most are believed to use design experts from Europe and the US.

Even with local Chinese boat building on the rise, many wealthy Chinese will still pay a premium for a European yacht. But the nation may have that end covered too. Last year, a Chinese buyer snared a 75-per-cent stake in the Ferretti Group, considered to be the Ferrari of the yachting world, for a cool €178 million ($213 million), plus debt. The group produces Ferretti, Riva, Itama and Bertram boats, in Forli, Italy. The majority shareholding was sold to bulldozer-maker Weichai Group, which is part of the state-owned Shandong Heavy Industry Group.

The deal makes Communist China the owner of the world’s largest luxury yacht maker, and presumably gives Ferretti a leg up in sales in the world’s most populous country.